Narrow picture when upconverting with SA8000HD

I have an SA8000HD DVR which can output 480i, 480p, 720p, and 1080i.
If I use it in "pass-through" mode, it just sends the signal to my TV
as-is, and the TV figures out how to display it. I have no complaints
with this mode, except that there's this horribly annoying
pause/stutter/blue screen when switching between channels with
different modes. Sometimes it can take 10 or 15 seconds to figure out
what resolution to output in. Even worse, the stupid box does the same
thing about a third of the time when I try to rewind or fast-forward a
recorded program. It does it every time if I try to rewind live TV
without first pausing the feed.

But that's not my main problem. In an effort to avoid this whole
issue, I'd rather just use the thing in fixed 1080i or 720p mode. My
TV is fine with that, and the box is supposed to be able to do it, but
the resulting picture is a little bit too narrow when displaying
up-converted 480i channels. I'm not talking about a gross narrowing,
like if you narrowed a letterbox image down to 4:3, it's only about 5%
narrower than it should be, but it's definitely noticable. On my 30"
screen an up-converted 480i image is almost a full inch narrower than
the same picture in pass-through mode. FYI, the 480i picture in
pass-through mode looks identical in size and aspect ratio to the
picture if I just plug the coax directly into the TV and bypass the
8000HD altogether.

My TV is small enough as it is; I don't need this box making the image
any smaller.

Does anybody else have this problem? If so, have you found a solution?

Thanks,
Josh

Josh wrote:
I have an SA8000HD DVR which can output 480i, 480p, 720p, and 1080i.
If I use it in "pass-through" mode, it just sends the signal to my TV
as-is, and the TV figures out how to display it. I have no complaints
with this mode, except that there's this horribly annoying
pause/stutter/blue screen when switching between channels with
different modes. Sometimes it can take 10 or 15 seconds to figure out
what resolution to output in. Even worse, the stupid box does the same
thing about a third of the time when I try to rewind or fast-forward a
recorded program. It does it every time if I try to rewind live TV
without first pausing the feed.

But that's not my main problem. In an effort to avoid this whole
issue, I'd rather just use the thing in fixed 1080i or 720p mode. My
TV is fine with that, and the box is supposed to be able to do it, but
the resulting picture is a little bit too narrow when displaying
up-converted 480i channels. I'm not talking about a gross narrowing,
like if you narrowed a letterbox image down to 4:3, it's only about 5%
narrower than it should be, but it's definitely noticable. On my 30"
screen an up-converted 480i image is almost a full inch narrower than
the same picture in pass-through mode. FYI, the 480i picture in
pass-through mode looks identical in size and aspect ratio to the
picture if I just plug the coax directly into the TV and bypass the
8000HD altogether.

My TV is small enough as it is; I don't need this box making the image
any smaller.

Does anybody else have this problem? If so, have you found a solution?

Thanks,
Josh


How about this, they are just being safe and make sure there is no
overscan. That is just a guess...

Steve